WASHINGTON — North Korea’s decision to reactivate a nuclear plant in Yongbyon that it shuttered earlier this year is meeting with little more than a shrug from the Bush administration, which is working desperately to secure the $700 billion it is requesting from Congress to bail out Wall Street’s investment banks.

Secretary of State Rice yesterday promised that talks with North Korea would continue, despite the regime’s provocative move and the unknown condition of the country’s leader Kim Jong-Il, who is said to have suffered a stroke in August. A White House spokesman offered that President Bush was “disappointed.”

Despite the muted reaction from the president, the move by Pyongyang yesterday is a major blow to one of the signature initiatives of Mr. Bush’s second term. In 2007, Mr. Kim’s regime agreed to halt its nuclear program and come clean to the international community in exchange for food, aid, and removal from an American list of state sponsors of terrorism. But yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that the seals at the Yongbyon nuclear facility had been broken and work to make nuclear fuel had restarted.

The provocation comes after speculation spread throughout the West earlier this month that Mr. Kim had suffered a stroke. Since then, South Korea’s intelligence service has told the political leadership in Seoul that the North Korean leader’s health has improved, South Korean press outlets reported. Nonetheless, the uncertainty of Mr. Kim’s condition leaves the negotiations in limbo.

In New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly session, Ms. Rice downplayed the news yesterday. “”We’ve been through ups and downs in this process before,” she said. “But this is a six-party process, and that means that there are other states that are carrying the same message to North Korea about their obligations.”

She warned that North Korea, a Stalinist state that prides itself on its secrecy and isolation from the rest of the world, risked “further isolation” with its recent actions.

A spokeswoman for Senator Obama’s presidential campaign, Wendy Morigi, said a nuclear North Korea poses a “grave danger” to America as well as Japan and South Korea. “Senator Obama is very concerned by North Korea’s recent actions, especially given its unstable leadership and history of proliferation,” she said. “We must work with our partners now so we do not allow North Korea to reverse course on disablement and make more weapons-grade materials that it can then sell to the highest bidder.”

The White House implicated North Korea in sharing nuclear know-how with Syria last September after Israeli jets bombed a facility there.

A spokesman for Senator McCain, who announced yesterday that he was suspending his campaign until a bailout plan was passed in Congress for the Wall Street investment banks, had no comment yesterday on North Korea.